Music: Best Albums of the Year Series: 1995

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Hey there Mr. Officer
Why not put down your gun?
You and me should get together
Have sex with your son!

 

[Roo Returns]

1) To Bring You My Love - PJ Harvey
2) Garbage - Garbage
3) A.M. - Wilco
4) Foo Fighters - Foo Fighters
5) The Bends - Radiohead
6) Wrecking Ball - Emmylou Harris


Jagged Little Pill would get my vote as worst album of the year, and possibly worst album ever.

I actually like this album but I have a "musician joke" I make with friends: Flea doing a Jaco Pastorious impersonation got Alanis Morrisette onto heavy MTV rotation.

 

[Roo Returns]

I remember this year very well. I waited what felt like forever for the Chili Peppers to finish One Hot Minute and I loved it when it came out in September. That August Mortal Kombat came out in the theaters and Warped by RHCP along with Galaxy by Blind Melon from their Soup album and Runway from Janet Jackson's Greatest Hits were on heavy rotation. It was the first summer of Warped Tour which would foreshadow the punk/ska movement that started a little later.

Big years for Rancid, Bjork, Oasis, Radiohead, Pulp, Pavement, Green Day kept the momentum going, and Faith No More put out a record that got trashed but would expand their universe.

To me 1995 was the epilogue of the Lollapalooza Era which went from 1991- fall 1995. The climate changed so much from the spring of that year to the fall, it was crazy. 1996 was like an entirely different ballgame too.

 

[Fixed to Ruin]

Nostalgia vote for this album

 

[Langdon Alger]

Jagged Little Pill would get my vote as worst album of the year, and possibly worst album ever.

Ok, that’s just absurd. If Alanis isn’t your cup of tea, that’s cool, but to say Jagged Little Pill is possibly the worst album ever is a bit much.

 

[Azathoth]

Solid year for metal. Voted Death, Opeth, and other

At the Gates-Slaughter of the Soul
Fear Factory-Demanufacture
Dissection-Storm of the Lights Bane

 

[Eisen]

I expect this to win, but to me The Bends was an amazing "song" (in 10 parts) in 1995 and a relatively bland album.

The Bends is my favourite album by Radiohead for My Iron Lung alone.

 

[Eisen]

1995 was a good year.

Behemoth - Sventevith (Storming Near the Baltic)
Blind Guardian - Imaginations from the Other Side
Cathedral - The Carnival Bizarre
Death - Symbolic
Gamma Ray - Land of the Free
Iced Earth - Burnt Offerings
Isengard - Høstmørke
King Diamond - The Spider's Lullaby
My Dying Bride - The Angel and the Dark River
Running Wild - Masquerade
Saint Vitus - Die Healing
Symphony X - The Damnation Game
Usurper - Diabolosis
Vader - De Profundis
Vital Remains - Into Cold Darkness

Land of the Free is probably a top ten power metal album of all time in a year with a lot of great power metal. I might put Burnt Offerings in that same group, but I'm going to pick Gamma Ray - Land of the Free as my album of the year.

I haven't listened to that album in ages. Something to do for later. Great album.

 

[Langdon Alger]

The Bends is my favourite album by Radiohead for My Iron Lung alone.

My favourites would be Just, Street Spirit and Fake Plastic Trees. Bones is an underrated one, and Nice Dream and Planet Telex are good too. I tend to skip the three songs between My Iron Lung and Street Spirit.

 

[Saturated Fats]

There are four albums that I hold higher than everything else in 95, and two of them are in my top-25 of all time. I go back and forth between which work I think is the best, but I'll go with Liquid Swords. I am a total sucker for hip-hop that is driven by extended motifs or thematic skits, and the samurai-and-son skit, alongside GZA's ironclad lyrics, are unforgettable. Songs like 'Duel of the Iron Mic' and 'Labels' are absolute stone-cold classics, and it is maybe my third-favourite hip-hop album of all time, behind Illmatic and Atrocity Exhibition. But Post also deserves a shout for being the first in perhaps the greatest album trilogy in any modern artist's catalogue. Björk is a goddamned genius.

1. Genius/GZA - Liquid Swords
2. Björk - Post
3. Swans - The Great Annihilator
4. Emmylou Harris - Wrecking Ball

5. Mobb Deep - The Infamous
6. Sparklehorse - Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot
7. Fugazi - Red Medicine
8. Red House Painters - Ocean Beach
9. Alice in Chains - Alice in Chains
10. Oasis - (What's the Story) Morning Glory?

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

The Bends is my favourite album by Radiohead for My Iron Lung alone.

Yeah the noisy/deconstructed parts are pretty cool, but the song they mess up with is still pretty bland (to me). The comparable on the Mr. Bungle album would be Merry Go Bye Bye. I think it's better on all levels, but as said a few times before, I am Patton-biased (and you could add Spruance-biased, and probably Dunn-biased too) - and really not a fan of Radiohead.


(this is meant to be loud ;-) )

 

[Perennial]

How do you leave this one off the poll?

 

[Langdon Alger]

How do you leave this one off the poll?

Don’t go hiding in the shade!

 

[Roo Returns]

How do you leave this one off the poll?

Another album that has gone through many emotions and opinions over the years. Nirvana rips offs, overplayed, frauds (not my words), forgotten, and now appreciated since mainstream music is terrible.

 

[Roo Returns]

Solid year for metal. Voted Death, Opeth, and other

At the Gates-Slaughter of the Soul
Fear Factory-Demanufacture
Dissection-Storm of the Lights Bane

Great call and correct me if I'm wrong because Headbanger's Ball was over by the time this album arrived so it wouldn't have nearly the mainstream appeal in the US (MTV's SuperRock hosted by Jackie Farry was also over) but was this one of those albums that took about a year to gain momentum? I remember the first time I heard Fear Factory was the spring of 1996 and they'd be pretty well known the next 5 years.

Another album I'd like to mention is the debut of Candiria Sirealistic Madness.

 

[Langdon Alger]

Another album that has gone through many emotions and opinions over the years. Nirvana rips offs, overplayed, frauds (not my words), forgotten, and now appreciated since mainstream music is terrible.

I remember in 2007 when the song “Straight Lines” came out, and I heard it on the radio one day. I couldn’t believe it was Silverchair. I think on Frogstomp they were trying to sound like Seattle grunge bands, but over time, their music matured.

Frogstomp is still a good debut though.

Tomorrow
Pure Massacre
Shade
Suicidal Dream

Those are the standout tracks for me.

 

[Perennial]

Another album that has gone through many emotions and opinions over the years. Nirvana rips offs, overplayed, frauds (not my words), forgotten, and now appreciated since mainstream music is terrible.

They weren't even old enough to drive when they made that album...

From Frogstomp's Wikipedia page:

In 2015, James Rose of the Daily Review wrote of the album, "As an album in its own right, it's pretty good. As a debut by three 15 year olds, it's about as good as it gets."

 

[Langdon Alger]

Didn’t Gansta’s Paradise by Coolio and One of us by Joan Osbourne come out in 95?

 

[Roo Returns]

They weren't even old enough to drive when they made that album...

From Frogstomp's Wikipedia page:

In 2015, James Rose of the Daily Review wrote of the album, "As an album in its own right, it's pretty good. As a debut by three 15 year olds, it's about as good as it gets."

@Perennial @Darcy Loewen I agree with you both. I'm only saying what the perception was back in 1995 at least in the Northeast US.

Some of it definitely was jealousy. A bunch of teenagers put out one of the better albums of that year.

1995 was a weird time because it was still during the "trying to replace Nirvana with a trio" era. Green Day benefited that from a little, Silverchair had to deal with it.

Even later in the decade bands like Seven Mary Three got labelled as Nirvana rip offs and everyone was thirsty for a new Nirvana, it even impacted At The Drive-In in 2000/2001 for Relationship In Command.

 

[Langdon Alger]

First Foo Fighters record was pretty solid. Dave Grohl played all the instruments on that one. 25 years later, they’re still going.

 

[ProstheticConscience]

Quite the year for Britpop.

 

[Eisen]

Yeah the noisy/deconstructed parts are pretty cool, but the song they mess up with is still pretty bland (to me). The comparable on the Mr. Bungle album would be Merry Go Bye Bye. I think it's better on all levels, but as said a few times before, I am Patton-biased (and you could add Spruance-biased, and probably Dunn-biased too) - and really not a fan of Radiohead.


(this is meant to be loud ;-) )

I like the noisy part better as well, but you need the "bland" part as a contrast. I tried just noise music, but it doesn't work for me.
And yeah, Mr. Bungle is great.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

How do you leave this one off the poll?

weren't these guys like 17 and 18 when they recorded this? pretty crazy

 

[Fixed to Ruin]

Ok, that’s just absurd. If Alanis isn’t your cup of tea, that’s cool, but to say Jagged Little Pill is possibly the worst album ever is a bit much.

They just made a broadway musical based on jagged little pill. Can't say that about any other album on this list.

 

[Perennial]

weren't these guys like 17 and 18 when they recorded this? pretty crazy

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